Victory in Congress for Disclosure on
Military Training

Thanks
to the efforts and hard work of many people in defense of human rights, the
culture of secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding Defense Department
policies suffered a blow May 22 when the U.S. House of Representatives approved
the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop (GA) amendment to the National Defense Authorization
Act for FY 2009. The amendment forces the public release of names, rank, country
of origin, courses and dates of attendance of graduates and instructors at the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known
as the School of the Americas. The amendment was approved by a vote of 220-189.

Shortly
after the House action, Ecuador’s new defense minister, Javier Ponce,
announced that Ecuador will not seek military training for its soldiers in the
United States. “I am absolutely against continuing that kind of training,”
he said. WHINSEC, especially, “has been a fundamental means to control the
military policies of the region’s countries,” he added. Instead, Ecuador will
seek military training through the newly-created South American Defense Council
promoted by Brazil – without US participation.

In recent
years, WHINSEC has denied information that in the past has been vital in
identifying the perpetrators of massacres, assassinations, and other human
rights abuses committed in Latin America. But WHINSEC is not the only
institution that refuses to release the names of soldiers receiving military
training from the United States. Randolph AFB in Texas, Naval Postgraduate
Academy in California, Fort Rucker in Alabama train hundreds of Colombian
soldiers and officers each year, but denied Freedom of Information Act requests
by the Fellowship of Reconciliation for the names of Colombian officers and
soldiers who received military training there. Other schools stated they had no
records for the foreign soldiers trained at their institutions.

The access
to information regarding students and instructors attending US military courses
will allow human rights organizations to continue to monitor training programs
and identify those graduates and instructors who have violated human rights or
taken part in criminal activities in their home countries. For example,
recent disclosures indicate that 200 Mexican security forces trained at Fort
Benning in Georgia later joined drug trafficking syndicates that have committed
killings on both sides of the US-Mexico border – using their training against
the same forces the United States is supporting. Information is power, and the
more information we have, the better tools we have for stopping US militarism in
Latin America and the illegal and destructive abuses committed by unaccountable
armed forces.

The approval of this amendment will now lead us
to face a new challenge to insure that WHINSEC also be held accountable by the
U.S. Senate. In the coming weeks we will continue to keep you updated so we can
work together towards another victory.